Day 662: Visiting the Rocky Mountain Airshow

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Ben

This morning we said goodbye to the O family in Denver, where we’ve been parked since Shavuos. It’s been a lot of fun catching up, as we haven’t been here since 2011:

The kids will miss the family dog, Radar:

It was a tight fit getting out of the driveway:

We drove east to the Snowflake PPG flying site, where we stayed a few nights before Shavuos. We dropped off the RV and drove just a few miles down the road to the Rocky Mountain Airshow. The first performance was by local PPG pilots Nathan and Chris:

Several vintage warbirds flew by, including this NA-50:

And this T-6:

Doug Jardine, flying his Sbach 342:

Matt Younkin, performing impressive maneuvers in his Twin Beech passenger plane:

The Air Force Honor Guard did a demonstration:

The highlight of the snow was the USAF Thunderbirds, flying the F-16 Falcon:

The Calypso maneuver:

Crossover Break maneuver:

Delta Wing formation:

Delta Burst maneuver:

Bomb Burst maneuver:

At the bottom of the Bomb Burst, all four planes cross each other’s paths at 90 degree angles:

The afternoon program had Bob Carlton flying his Subsonix:

We saw several flybys by this World War II era B-25 Mitchell. Named “Maid in the Shade”, it is one of only a few dozen still flying:

Flyby with bomb bay doors open:

Beech Staggerwing:

The last performer we saw was Don Nelson flying his Sukhoi 26:

Traffic in and out of the airshow was considerable, but it was worth the wait. We’ve been trying to get the kids to an airshow since the beginning of the trip, so I’m glad we were finally able to do it.

Day 660: Biking and Skating

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Ben

Today, Trish and the kids went back to the local skate park:

Meanwhile, I went for a nice ride to the Aurora Reservoir and back. On the way back, I stopped and watched the R/C planes flying at Cherry Creek Reservoir:

Trish posted more jewelry to her online jewelry store:

Good Shabbos from Denver!

Day 659: Skate Park and Gap Filling Foam

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Ben

Today we visited a local skate park. M received some great scootering tips from another boy at the park:

While the kids and Trish were doing homeschool, I was finishing up mouse-proofing the RV. There’s no way to seal up the basement level, as the slides actuate into and out of the basement, so those holes can’t be plugged up. What I’m trying to do is isolate the basement level from the living level in the RV. This mostly involved filling gaps around water and sewer lines that come up from the basement behind cabinets. In some cases, the holes were much larger than they needed to be:

The vent pipe went through a huge hole in the wall behind the kitchen cabinets, so I cut out a large piece of scrap wood, glued it to the wall, and filled in the remaining gaps with foam:

We will see what happens, hopefully the mice will get bored and leave instead of hanging out in the walls now that we’ve locked them out of our house.

Endomondo Embeds Broken, Hopefully only Temporarily

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Ben

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I use Endomondo to display all the routes for hiking, cycling, and PPG flights. Unfortunately, about a week ago, Endomondo broke their embed functionality, so posts with embedded routes will temporarily have a large whitespace where the route should be displayed. Endomondo says they’re working on the problem. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Day 658: Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR, NCAR, and Celestial Seasonings

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Ben

Today we visited Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR, which was an Army chemical weapons depot turned superfund site. The refuge video presentation and visitor center were well done:

Sadly, there’s no Junior Ranger program here. We drove the nature drive in the refuge, and spotted several bird species and a pair of bison.

Continuing north to Boulder, we visited the National Center for Atmospheric Research. NCAR is a private-sector non-profit funded almost exclusively by tax dollars via the National Science Foundation:

We attended the noontime tour which was a summary of the various exhibit spaces in the building. After that, we explored the exhibits on our own, which included an exhibit that allows visitors to pass their hand through a “cloud”:

In the basement, we looked at the old supercomputer used for weather simulations. The new system is too large for this facility, and is located in Wyoming:

Another exhibit talked about the architectural design process for the facility:

The other exhibits talked about how the atmosphere and climate work, including the interaction between the Sun and the Earth’s atmosphere:

Our last stop for the day was the factory tour at Celestial Seasonings, the largest boutique tea company in the US. We saw the milling room where the ingredients are ground up, as well as the packaging line from carton assembly to robotic arms that stack filled cartons on pallets. We also visited the sinus-opening peppermint room, where milled peppermint is stacked floor to ceiling, ready to be used as an ingredient in several flavors of tea.

No photography was allowed inside, so you won’t get to see photos of us in hair nets (and a beard net for me!). Here’s the outside of the building: